


Chris and The Dog

by Tisaniere



Series: The Argent-Hale Family [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Chris and Peter are parents, Daddy!Chris, Domestic Fluff, Family wants a dog, Fluff, M/M, Peter and Chris are domestic, daddy!Peter, like seriously so fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 15:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3295358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tisaniere/pseuds/Tisaniere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter and Chris are married and raising three kids (adopted son Scott and Peter's niece Cora and nephew Derek), with all the challenges that family life bring up. </p><p>'Chris and The Dog' - each member of the family try to get Chris to buy them a dog. Oddly, Derek turns out to be the most persuasive. </p><p>- </p><p>“I mean you’d have a companion for when I’m not here.”</p><p>“Peter, I love you very much, but I can manage when you are out of town for two nights every other month.”</p><p>“Cora was right though,” Peter carried on, ghosting his fingers over the inked pattern on Chris’s right bicep, “The dog could be a bit of extra security for the house.”</p><p>“I’m a private security consultant and weapons dealer with a handgun that I’m very skilled at using in the bedside table and a cabinet full of shotguns downstairs. And you are devious. I think we’ve got all security breaches covered.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chris and The Dog

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I can't get enough of domestic fluff and Peter/Chris are my new thing so...here you go. 
> 
> For anyone waiting for Shine Bright like a Diamond (Teen Wolf) or The Glade Airport Boys (The Maze Runner) I promise updates are coming NEXT WEEK (I promise). Real life got in the way and I can only apologise! 
> 
> Derek - 16   
> Scott - 14  
> Cora - 11

 

**1\. Cora**

“Peter, you didn’t turn the security alarm on last night,” Chris announced as he entered the mess of their early morning kitchen. Scott and Cora were sat on high stools at the kitchen island squabbling over the toy at the bottom of the cereal pack. Peter was pretending to adjudicate, but since he was actually reading the newspaper the argument had descended into a leg wrestle, “I asked you to do one thing last night and that was put the security alarm on before you came up.”

“I forgot. You usually do it.”

“Yes, I do, but the one night that I get in too late and too tired and go to bed first means that _you_ should do it.”

Peter didn’t look up from the newspaper and simply raised his eyebrows.

“One job, Peter, _one_ job.”

“Actually if I remember correctly you asked me to do more than one job before you went to sleep.”

“Ew,” Derek snarled from the kitchen counter. He had a bowl of cereal in his hand and had taken up the perch to stay away from the spray of milk, bits of cereal and stray kicks that made up breakfast with Cora and Scott.

“Pop, that’s gross,” Scott said as his ears burned a furious red.

“If we had a dog,” Cora piped up, either too innocent to know what her uncle and his husband meant or else deciding to ignore it, “then we wouldn’t have to worry so much about not remembering to turn on the security alarm. We’d have our own living security alarm who could alert the house.”

“An intruder can’t shoot a security alarm. You can shoot a dog.”

Peter’s gave his husband a look out of the corner of his eye, “Well that’s a nice argument to present to the kids, Chris.”

“You can disable a burglar alarm,” Cora carried on, not perturbed by the gruesome example.

“Not one of my mine,” Chris said.

Cora let out a growl of frustration and rolled her eyes. Scott sank into a watery pout. Derek, who had looked been watching the conversation slyly over the top of his cereal bowl, had the start of a frown between his brows.

 

 

**2\. Scott**

 

“But a dog would make sure we all got enough exercise.”

“That’s what after-school activities and gyms are for.”

“We could walk it as a family. Go into the preserve and do really long walks at the weekend.”

“Scott, when you and Stiles had that dog walking job last summer your exact words were ‘taking a dog for a walk is the most boring thing in the world’.”

“That’s because those dogs were boring!”

“What if we get a boring dog?”

“ _You’re_ boring, Dad!” Scott finally shot out and with a frustrated flail of his arms he marched out of the kitchen. Peter leant against the fridge next to where Chris was chopping vegetables for dinner.

“From the mouth of babes…”

“I’m not boring!”

“You’re getting really boring about this dog thing. Why don’t you just give in? It’s four against one. Let democracy win.”

 

**3\. Peter**

 

“You’d have a furry friend.”

“ _You_ are my furry friend.”

“Furry? Really? I’m offended.”

“Good.”

Chris had his face buried in the pillow and he had been, for one blissful moment, on the edge of sleep. But now he had Peter tracing patterns between his shoulder blades and was hearing another side of this damn dog argument. And he had a headache.

“I mean you’d have a companion for when I’m not here.”

“Peter, I love you very much, but I can manage when you are out of town for two nights every other month.”

“Cora was right though,” Peter carried on, ghosting his fingers over the inked pattern on Chris’s right bicep, “The dog could be a bit of extra security for the house.”

“I’m a private security consultant and weapons dealer with a handgun that I’m very skilled at using in the bedside table and a cabinet full of shotguns downstairs. And you are devious. I think we’ve got all security breaches covered.”

“I don’t understand why you don’t think a dog would be a good idea. It’ll give the kids something to bond over and Scott’s right, we could take it for walks together and do a few family things with it. It might be nice.”

Chris turned his head so that he was facing Peter.

“Why do _you_ want a dog?”

“I just think it’d be nice to have a dog around the house. Family bonding. A furry friend. Some extra security in the house. All that good stuff.”

“I don’t get it,” Chris said with a shrug of his shoulders, “Also, I can see just who is going to take care of this dog. Me. Scott will be interested in it for two seconds and then get distracted by Stiles, or lacrosse, or girls, or all three at the same time. Cora is only eleven, she can’t take the dog for a walk by herself. You are at the office most of the time. And that leaves me, at home, with a dog who needs entertaining all day. And I’m not even going to get started on its crap in our backyard.”

Peter collapsed onto the pillows on his side of the bed.

“Fine. Fine. You’re such a scrooge.”

“So you’re going to stop going on about a dog?”

“Oh no, no. This just means war. You asked for it. Welcome to a whole new level of pet-pestering.”

“If you’re not careful I will get a pet and use it to replace you.”

 

**4\. Stiles**

 

“But it’ll be super fun to have a dog around, they’re always happy! You can play with it and take it for walks, and teach it how to do tricks.”

“Stiles, you’re not even part of this family, why do you care if we get a dog?”

“Let’s face it, if you get a dog then it’s kind of like me getting a dog too.”

“That’s true.”

“So are you going to get one?”

“Stiles what are you even doing in my house, Scott’s at the grocery store with Peter.”

“I smelt brownies.”

“Get out.”

 

**5\. Derek**

Chris nearly fell over Derek on the stairs in the early hours of the morning on his way to get a painkiller. The packet they usually had in their en-suite cabinet was empty and there were none on the kids’ bathroom, so he was on a hunt. He only just about stopped in time from kneeing Derek in the back of the head.

“Derek? What are you doing?”

Derek leapt to his feet, “Nothing.”

“It’s three in the morning. You’ve got to get up for school in a few hours, why are you sat on the stairs?”

“I was just getting a drink of water.”

Chris looked down at Derek’s empty hands, “Well you failed there, didn’t you?”

“What are you doing up?” Derek asked with that Hale scowl Chris knew so well.

“I have a headache, I need a painkiller. Come on, to bed.”

Chris ushered Derek up the stairs and made sure he was through his door before going to get the tablets. When he slipped back into their bedroom Peter groaned.

“What was that about?”

“Derek was sat on the stairs.”

Peter lay sprawled on back with no shirt on and all of the blankets kicked away because the man ran like a furnace. He cracked an eye open and peered across at Chris.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Chris downed his tablets and then a sound made him turn to the door. 

“Did you hear that?”

“What?”

Chris crept across the floor and eased open their bedroom door. The moonlight had been released from behind the clouds and shone through the hall window and glass of the front door, illuminating a figure hunched on the stairs.

Chris shut the door and turned back to the bed, “He’s sat there again.”

Peter rubbed a hand over his face, “Alright. I got this. Come back to bed.”

Chris did as he was told and settled back beneath the blankets as Peter pulled on a pair of sweatpants and left the bedroom. Chris heard his and Derek’s voices out in the hall but they were soft and he couldn’t make out the words. He was almost asleep again by the time Peter came back. He waited for Peter to strip off the pants and crawl back into bed before asking.

“What happened?”

Peter hooked an arm under Chris’s shoulders and he settled into the fiercely hot embrace, “Derek has been getting up at night and sitting on the stairs watching the house for the past few weeks.”

“ _Weeks_? He’s not been sleeping?”

“Not really, no.”

“How did I not notice this?”

“I know you’re the big bad security consultant with a handgun in the nightstand, but you’re also a seriously heavy sleeper. I’ve been going out there to get Derek back into bed most nights.”

“I’m not a heavy sleeper.”

“Don’t worry dear, it’s just your age.”

Chris dug a finger into the sensitive spot just beneath Peter’s ribs and his husband folded with an ‘oof’.

“Sorry, sorry. But you haven’t been noticing and Derek made me swear not to tell you.”

Chris rested his hand against Peter’s stomach, “What do you mean he’s been ‘watching the house’?”

Peter sighed, “Derek’s got it into his head…that, I don’t know, something ‘bad’ is going to happen to us. He feels like someone needs to keep watch.”

Chris closed his eyes, “Ah. God, poor Derek.”

“I know. Can’t blame the kid really, can you? I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night too and just…check. Make sure everyone is ok. That there aren’t any-”

“Fires?” Chris supplied gently.

“Yeah. I don’t know what’s started it but Derek is suddenly paranoid that something is going to happen. So he sits on the stairs and he watches the house to make sure it doesn’t.”

“We have a security alarm,” Chris said with a shake of the head.

“Yeah, well we had a fire alarm.”

They lay in silence for a few moments whilst Chris thought this through, “So Derek feels like he needs to stay up and guard the house?”

“I’ve tried telling him that we’re as safe as we can be. But it doesn’t seem to work. Didn’t help that I forgot to set the alarm the other week. I think that’s when it started. It’s my fault.”

“I don’t think it is, Peter.”

Something clicked at the back of Chris’s mind, “So that’s why you’ve been going on about a dog being an extra bit of security?”

“Well we both know that the kids have all wanted a dog for a while. And when Derek and I were talking about it one night he said ‘maybe if we had a dog or something I wouldn’t be so worried’. So I may have stirred Scott and Cora up a bit to start asking for a dog again and use that as part of the argument.”

“You should have told me.”

“I promised Derek that I wouldn’t. Anyway, I didn’t want to guilt you into it. I’ve got no idea if a dog would actually help him sleep better, I just thought that I might as well give it a go if everyone wanted a dog anyway.”

“You didn’t succeed because now I feel awful.”

“Don’t. It may not help. And that’s not why I want us to get a dog, not really.”

“We need to talk to Derek. He can’t sit on the stairs at night thinking that if he doesn’t something bad is going to happen. No wonder he got that detention last week for not paying attention in class, he was probably asleep.”

“Maybe you should give it a go.”

“I will, when he’s back from school. And then we can all get together and talk about this damn dog idea.”

 

* * *

 

Chris knocked on Derek’s bedroom the next afternoon once Scott, Cora and Stiles were busy downstairs fighting for the remote.

“Hey. Can I come in?”

Derek frowned at him suspiciously, “Why?”

“Just wanted to talk.”

“Peter didn’t tell me where he hid your iPod.”

Chris paused, “Oh, ok. I wasn’t actually aware that he’d hidden it, but alright. Why would he take my iPod?”

Derek shrugged, “Peter’s weird.”

He wasn’t wrong there.

“Well it wasn’t anything to do with the iPod, actually. It was to do with last night, and you sitting on the stairs.”

He shut the door behind him and went to lean on the desk. He had been Derek’s legal guardian for four years, ever since the fire that had taken all members of the family bar Derek, little Cora and Peter. But he had been married to Derek’s uncle for longer than that, and had known the Hale family since he was a kid. So he knew how to talk to a Hale, how to approach a difficult topic with them. The best way was to be unflinching before their defences knocked you down.

“Peter said it was because you’ve been worried about everyone being safe at night. That you’re anxious something might happen whilst we’re all sleeping.”

Derek just glared into the middle distance.

“You have to know Derek that we are safe here. I’m a security consultant, I know what I’m talking about.”

“We felt safe at home too,” Derek snapped, “And then a fire killed everyone. Sorry if I don’t automatically believe you.”

“What happened at your old house was a freak accident, Derek. A horrible, completely unforeseen set of circumstance that ended up in something happening that no-one could do anything about. It is so incredibly rare. And you survived. You deserve better than to think that that’s the sort of event that’s going to chase you the rest of your life.”

Derek wasn’t looking at Chris at all but Chris could hear the break in his voice, “How do I know?”

Chris knew better than to approach him now, even though all he wanted to do was give the teenager in front of him a hug.

“How can you promise something won’t happen again?”

“I can’t. I can’t promise you that nothing could possibly ever happen to this house at night whilst we sleep. What I can promise you is that your uncle and I always do our damn best to make sure that it doesn’t. And if it does, we will handle it. The safety of you kids is our responsibility and we take it very seriously.”

“Fine,” Derek mumbled.

“Doesn’t sound ‘fine’.”

“No, it is. It’s fine. I believe you.”

“Good. You don’t have to worry, Derek, your Uncle and I have it all covered. He’s a light sleeper, which I used to be too but apparently not anymore because I’m an old fart.” Derek’s shoulders jumped with a barely suppressed laugh, “And if anyone came into the house I think we’d both be pretty good at dealing with it. Plus, we’ve got a Sheriff living next door. Between us as a team, we’ve got this.”

“Ok.”

“It’s not your responsibility anyway. Your Uncle and I look after you, Scott and Cora. It’s ours. Don’t grow up before your time.”

Derek nodded.

“Although you know what, Cora was right. A dog would be quite a good thing to have around to keep an eye on the place whilst we sleep. I suggest guard dogs at all sorts of facilities I do security work for.”

Derek was now eyeing him suspiciously, not sure if that was where the idea had actually come from or whether Peter had divulged another part of their conversation.

“You said an intruder could shoot a dog.”

“And I have to amend that by saying that house intruders are pretty rare. They are also usually smart enough to check the house out beforehand and therefore wouldn’t go for a one that houses two guys, two teenage boys, a security alarm, and sits next door to a house with a squad car parked outside. They also rarely come in with guns if they just want to steal your TV. I was just being…flippant. For the sake of it.”

“Then why did you say we should get a dog for someone to watch the house at night?”

The Hales were a shrewd bunch.

“Well Scott and Cora are going to start sneaking out of the house one day for parties and girlfriends or boyfriends aren’t they? May as well have a spy in the house to alert Peter and I.”

Derek chuckled.

  

**\+ AD (After Dog)**

 

“Is Derek in bed?”

“Yeah. Fast asleep. Didn’t even hear me bang into the door on my way out.”

"You're so graceful. He’s sleeping better, then?”

Peter settled back down in the bed, “Definitely. See, told you getting a dog was a good idea.”

“You mean this thing?” Chris asked. He pulled back the comforter to reveal Bostick, their adopted one year old Rottweiler, panting happily between them He tucked his hand under the dog’s chin and gently squeezed his dopey, sleepy face, “He wouldn’t bark if a man walked in right now and tried to get into bed with us.”

“What kind of man are we talking about here? Because that might be not be such a bad thing.”

“Shut. Up.”

“Oh come on, you love Bostick. Don’t lie, it was a great idea. Derek’s sleeping better, even if Bostick isn’t the best guard dog in the world. Cora and Scott play with him a lot, we’ve all gone on a lot of walks together, you’ve said it feels nice having something else in the house with you when we’re all out. Face it, you’re smitten.”

“You’re right,” Chris said with a dramatic groan as he massaged Bostick’s ears, “I’m in love with a soppy, irritating, drooling beast.”

“Hear that Bostick, you’ve won him over buddy.”

“I wasn’t talking about the dog.”

“Ha-ha.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Do let me know what you think! And if anyone else is a Peter/Chris fan...


End file.
